Barack Obama: Race & Politics In The Age of Fracture

Steve Kraske talks with University of Pennsylvania professor Thomas Sugrue about how Barack Obama's education and racial background laid the groundwork for much of his approach on current political issues.

Credit Christopher Dilts / Obama for America

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If you want to stir the pot of controversy, adding a dash of race and a pinch of politics is a sure way to spice up the discussion.

On Wednesday's Up to Date, we discuss how President Obama seems to straddle both political and racial divides and why understanding that tension is crucial to navigating the fractious issues that dominate today’s legislative landscape.

HEAR MORE: Prof. Thomas Sugrue speaks Oct. 10 at 4 p.m. at Woodruff Auditorium at the University of Kansas on "The Education of Barack Obama: Race and Politics in the Age of Fracture."

Guest:

Thomas Sugrue is a professor of history and sociology and director of the Penn Social Science and Policy Forum at the University of Pennsylvania. He is author of Not Even Past: Barack Obama and the Burden of Race and Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North. Sugrue's work has appeared in the Journal of American History, Journal of Urban History, Labor History, Prospects, International Labor and Working-Class History, American Behavioral Scientist, Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities, Michigan Journal of Race and the Law, Budapest Quarterly, the New York Times, London Review of Books, The Nation, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Washington Monthly, Dissent, Boston Globe, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, and Philadelphia Inquirer.